We're Australians in all our variations

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It was an arranged marriage between two deeply religious young
people, unusual enough for Australia in 2005. But there was more.
At the wedding the men and women were segregated into separate
rooms to eat and dance. The groom could not even shake the hands of
the women guests. It was against his religion.

This is not a scene from a mosque but from a synagogue. The
couple are ultra-orthodox Jews. They are law-abiding, respectful,
yet not assimilated in the way many Australians now demand of
Muslims.

There is a moral panic about the Muslims in our midst. It is
born of a fear they will never assimilate and that their
separateness will foster terrorism. Even among liberals, an
uneasiness about multiculturalism has emerged, as if these policies
are responsible for the bombs in London, and the utterings of the
fanatics.

Yet few migrants from the postwar years have ever completely
assimilated. They have never totally abandoned their culture, their
mindset, their original ways. They have been good-enough
Australians, even so. And that is all we can ask.

Our multicultural policies have always demanded immigrants
embrace Australian institutions and core values - freedom of
speech, freedom of religion, democracy, the rule of law, and
English as the national language. It would be going too far to
insist migrants drink beer, wear tank tops and audition for
Australian Idol to prove their patriotism.

Within these limits, Australia has accommodated a great deal of
cultural diversity. And this has enriched Australia, not diminished
it or undermined its cohesion. People's colour, their dress, their
faith has nothing to do with their allegiance to Australia.

What does it matter if a Jew wears a skullcap, and a Muslim a
hijab if they contribute to the society and obey its laws? What
does it matter if a Jew won't eat in a non-kosher restaurant and a
Muslim won't drink in a pub if they are good citizens, good
workers, good parents?

Government can't force migrants to barrack for the Wallabies. It
can't, Mugabe-style, smash ghettoes where people of similar
background congregate for a generation or two. There is a limit to
the conformity governments can demand of citizens in their private
lives, their beliefs, their dress.

As Geoffrey Brahm Levey, co-ordinator of Jewish studies at the
University of NSW writes, Australia's national identity is a work
in progress and "it is not the business of government to close the
conversation and complete the definition of what it means to be an
Australian".

Until recent demands for Muslims to conform to vague notions of
the true-blue Aussie, our government has been happy to help
communities better transmit their religion and culture to the next
generation through faith-based schools. These schools are required,
at the same time, to teach the state curriculum.

Despite Australia's success as a multicultural society, we are
subject to regular eruptions of prejudice and denunciation of
multicultural policies. We have demanded outsiders conform to
"Australian" culture even as each migrant wave has expanded what
Australian culture means. Not so long ago, when Pauline Hanson
reigned, Asians were considered unassimilable, either too clever or
too criminal. Now the worry is that Muslims will never fit in.

As anti-Muslim prejudice rises, I am reminded of the experiences
of my Jewish grandparents who arrived in Australia in the early
1930s, only a few years before the government imposed an annual
ceiling on Jewish immigration. The fear then was that Jews were a
"race" apart. If you looked in a superficial way at my
grandparents' lives, it would confirm the prejudices. At her death
nearly 50 years later, my grandmother hardly spoke English, and my
grandfather had only a rudimentary grasp of the language. They
lived in the Yiddish-speaking ghetto of Carlton in Melbourne, ate
kosher, observed the Jewish holidays and cut off a son when he
married out of the faith. But they conformed enough to Australia's
laws and norms to send two sons to World War II to fight for
democracy. They were good-enough Australians. And Australia was
good enough to them, allowing them freedom of worship and freedom
of association.

Many Australian Jews have assimilated over the generations but
many others live, to some extent, separate lives - congregate in
the same suburbs, socialise together, circumcise their sons and
have a strong affinity with Israel. At the same time, they are
proud Australians. The two are not mutually exclusive - the
separateness and the belonging.

Some demand more of Muslims, complete assimilation. Being a
good-enough Australian is not enough for them. Yet most also agree
the vast majority of Muslims are law-abiding citizens who denounce
terrorism.

Muslim fanaticism is scary. But I doubt its roots lie in a
policy of multicultural tolerance that has served us well. It can't
be blamed on the hijab and SBS. The challenge now for us all -
Muslim, Jew, Christian, etc - is to hold on to the core liberal
democratic values that bind us. And that principally means we judge
individuals as we find them, measure them by their deeds and resist
the impulse to stereotype. In that way we can all be good-enough
Australians.